


The Body Electric

by antonomasia09



Category: The Murderbot Diaries - Martha Wells, The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Angst, Crossover, Depressed Juno Steel, Fugitive Murderbot (Murderbot Diaries), Gen, GrayCris is terrible, Post-Rogue Protocol, Pre-Episode: s01e11-e12 Juno Steel and the Midnight Fox, Rita & Juno Steel Friendship, Sanctuary Moon, Soap Operas - Freeform, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-28
Updated: 2019-10-28
Packaged: 2021-01-05 20:01:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21214256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antonomasia09/pseuds/antonomasia09
Summary: Juno takes a new case: track down and eliminate the rogue SecUnit in Hyperion City.





	The Body Electric

**Author's Note:**

> Blame goes to alyyks, as usual, for introducing me to the Penumbra Podcast and effortlessly coming up with soap opera names and brilliant lines of Rita dialogue (and thanks, of course for beta reading!).

“There’s someone to see you, boss,” Rita announced, the moment Juno opened the door to the office. “Fancy suit and fancy shoes and fancy hair,” she added, and for a moment Juno stopped breathing because _Nureyev_? Could it really be? “Awful rude when I asked him if he wanted anything to drink while he waited,” Rita continued, and the hope died immediately. No matter what disguise Nureyev might be in or what role he was playing, he was smart enough to know not to antagonize Rita.

“Thanks,” Juno mumbled. He took a sip of the coffee she handed him as he slouched past, grimacing at the gritty feel of the protein powder she always added to it, and braced himself before entering his office.

The man currently standing in Juno’s office, eyeing his only-slightly-overcluttered desk with disgust, looked up when Juno came in.

“Ah. Detective Steel,” he said. The level of condescension in his tone was impressive. Juno hated him immediately. “I was under the impression that this agency opened at nine am?”

Juno glanced at the clock on the wall, which read nearly ten-thirty. Then again, it didn’t seem to be ticking.

“I had. Um. An appointment,” he said. With his toilet, shaking off the worst of his hangover, but this man didn’t need to know that. “Was there something I could do for you?”

“I have been informed that you come highly recommended as a detective in Hyperion City,” the man said, the purse of his lips showing what he thought of that, and of the people that had endorsed Juno. “I represent GrayCris Corporation. We have a rogue SecUnit on the loose that we want you to track down for us.”

“Nope,” Juno said without hesitation. He may have a death wish at times, which he preferred not to examine too closely, but there was _having a death wish_ and then there was _voluntarily getting in the way of a rampaging SecUnit_.

He had no desire to do work for GrayCris either. Juno was only vaguely familiar with the company, but he knew its type; the kind of business that pretended to be legitimate, but really it was just a bunch of thugs and criminals that preyed on the weak and vulnerable. Besides, hadn’t they been in the news lately, linked to the death of a survey team on some planet? Rita would remember.

“We are aware of the inherent risk of the job, and are prepared to pay quite a lot of money.” The man held up a piece of paper with a number written on it. There were a lot of zeroes.

Still. “Can’t spend money if you’re dead,” Juno said. “Which I will be, if I do this.”

“You won’t need to get close to it,” the man said. “Just close enough to shoot it a few dozen times. Rumor says you could do that from distances other people would laugh at.”

“So you don’t want me to catch it for you?” Juno asked.

The man shrugged. “It stole data from us. We can get that back whether it’s dead or alive.”

A SecUnit that went rogue, and instead of slaughtering everyone in sight it… stole data and then ran away? The man had to be lying about something.

“How do you even know it’s here?” Juno said. “I haven’t heard anything in the news the past few days about any mass murders.” That, he would have remembered for sure.

“We tracked it to Hyperion City, but the ambient radiation levels make it impossible for our technology to be any more precise than that. We’ve got the spaceports locked down, so it can’t leave, but management thought that local talent might have some success.” His mouth twisted at the word talent.

“I’m flattered,” Juno said, dry as he could manage.

The money really was good, and a rogue SecUnit truly was a danger to Hyperion City. Plus, if he didn’t have to get close to the SecUnit, could just snipe it from a rooftop, then he had a better than even chance of making it out alive. He’d taken cases with worse odds before.

“Okay, I’ll do it. I want half upfront, half when I deliver the SecUnit. My secretary will discuss billing and payment methods. You got a comms number so I can reach you when I’m done?”

The man recited a string of numbers, which Juno scrawled on the nearest piece of paper and stuck in his pocket. “I’ll be in touch,” he said.

“We expect results quickly,” the man said as he left. “Otherwise we will find another detective more suited to the job.”

“Right. Sure. I feel very intimidated.”

The door slammed shut. Juno sank into the chair behind his desk and slumped forward to pillow his face in his arms with a groan, regretting his decision already. Tracking down one of the most dangerous things in the universe on behalf of an evil corporation? What had Juno just gotten himself into?

***

The reason Juno was so good at his job was that he knew how to put himself into other people’s shoes. Criminals, cheating spouses, missing pets — all he had to do was figure out what they wanted, and then how they would go about achieving it.

A SecUnit, though? Juno was at a loss.

SecUnits didn’t want anything. They didn’t need anything; they were basically just robots with organic parts. Intelligent, but capable of independent thought only to the extent of their security training. When they went rogue, they went on killing sprees, not out of any sort of malice, but because that’s what SecUnits did.

At least, that’s what Juno had always believed.

But this SecUnit wasn’t acting like any rogue unit Juno had ever heard of. It was smart enough to evade GrayCris even if it couldn’t entirely shake their pursuit, and had thus far managed to blend in amongst the mainly human and augmented human residents of Hyperion City. There wasn’t anything on the streams about a rogue SecUnit decimating Hyperion City, and even the comms Rita had configured to pick up the HCPD radio chatter were quiet apart from the usual drug confiscations and low-level unjustified harassment.

So, maybe he should try tracking it as he would a human. What would a rogue human want?

To leave, probably. Juno couldn’t imagine it had come to Mars for any reason other than to use the radiation to shake GrayCris off its tail. With all the spaceports off-limits, it would be looking for other, less legal ways, of getting off-planet. Fortunately, Juno had a few contacts fitting that description that he could bribe into letting him know if they’d seen any SecUnits around.

What might the SecUnit want after that? Juno didn’t know, and honestly it was hard to bring himself to care with his head still aching and faint nausea curling in his gut. He needed more to drink.

Juno opened his desk drawer, where he kept the one flask Rita hadn’t found and thrown out yet, and took a swig. He’d make a few comm calls and ask Rita to try to find out more about the data that the SecUnit supposedly stole, he decided, and then turn his attention to his other case, the one about the missing Martian artifacts.

***

Twenty-four hours later, Juno was drawing a blank. A few of his contacts had reported a suspicious-looking human or augmented human skulking around their ships, but nobody had seen any sign of a SecUnit. No new breaks on the Martian artifacts case either.

Juno sighed and rubbed his knuckles hard against his forehead. He needed to get out of the office, breathe some air that wasn’t contaminated with salmon dust from Rita’s snacks, get his blood moving.

He grabbed his coat and his comms, and called out to Rita as he passed, “I’m going for a walk. Let me know if you get any news.”

“Hang on, I’ll come with you, boss,” she said. “Frannie says I should get more exercise. It’s good for my lotteries.”

Juno paused a moment. “You mean arteries?”

“That’s what I said,” she agreed. “I figure, anything that helps me win the lottery has to be good for my heart, right?”

“That’s not… you know what? Never mind.” Juno pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m not really in the mood for company right now,” he said.

“You’re never in the mood for company,” Rita pointed out.

“And yet somehow you never let that stop you.” Juno sighed. If he still said no, she’d just follow him anyway; she had the same look of concern that she did in the wake of the Mask of Grimpotheuthis case, when she barely let him out of her sight for a week. “Fine, come on.”

She squealed with delight as she put on her frilly pink blazer and tucked a bag of snacks into her purse.

They stepped outside to a sunny but chilly day with a light breeze. Juno hadn’t had any conscious plan in mind before, but he found himself heading in the direction of the seedy junkyards that doubled as spaceports for the sort of person who didn’t want to pass through customs at the more legitimate ones. Maybe he’d get lucky and find the SecUnit himself.

Rita kept up a steady stream of chatter as they walked, which Juno mostly ignored. She rarely expected him to contribute to her stream of consciousness anyway. 

“Isn’t this so much fun?” she said. “Taking in the sights of Hyperion City, doing some real proper detecting out on the streets?”

Juno couldn’t help himself. “Wandering around in the hopes of randomly bumping into the target isn’t what I’d call ‘proper detecting’ and it’s definitely not ‘fun’.”

“That’s ‘cause your inner nature ain’t in the proper mentality,” she said. “I was watching a stream the other day about achieving tranquility, and the lady said…”

“Were you able to find out what kind of data the SecUnit might have taken?” he interrupted.

“You want to talk about the case?” Rita whined. “Can’t we just enjoy a nice walk?”

“Humor me.”

Rita huffed. “Fine,” she said. “I don’t know for sure what it was because I haven’t quite cracked all of GrayCris’ firewalls yet. They upgraded their security software -- it’s really advanced now. But based on internal communications, it looks like it was related to what was on the news a few weeks ago, about how GrayCris killed a survey team. I think they might have found something the company wanted to keep quiet.”

“Why would a random SecUnit care about that?”

“It was there on the planet,” Rita said. “Not with GrayCris; there was another team, from PreservationAux. They survived thanks to their SecUnit, and afterwards they bought it from the company that owned it. But then it disappeared.”

“Is it possible that it’s not a rogue at all, then?” Juno asked. “Maybe they ordered it to steal the data.”

Rita made a face. “SecUnits ain’t spies,” she said. “It would have to have a human with it, telling it what to do, I think.”

“And if there was a human with it, GrayCris would have sent me after them too,” Juno said. “So… say the SecUnit was damaged on that planet while doing its job. Enough to make it go rogue but not enough to get rid of all its programming, so now it’s stuck on its last objective: protect its clients at all cost. And what better way for a SecUnit to do that than by destroying the GrayCris threat?”

“I guess it’s possible,” Rita said, but she sounded doubtful. “I’d expect a SecUnit to take a more blunt approach.”

“Yeah, you’re right. I just wish this whole case made more sense.”

“You know what it reminds me of?” she said. “There’s this one episode of _Fires Over Candema_ where the journalist falls in love with the SecUnit that her editor assigned to be her bodyguard, and they run away together to the Gamma Trios system to start a life together, but then war breaks out, and it turns out that the editor actually planned the whole thing from the beginning and had installed a secret subroutine in the SecUnit, and…”

Juno tuned her out again. They were getting near the industrial district, and the breeze had picked up. There hadn’t been anything in the weather report that morning about a potential sandstorm, but anyone born and raised on Mars recognized that sharp tang in the air and knew to look for shelter when the winds started to blow.

By now, they were too far from the office, and there were no shops or restaurants to duck into in this part of town. There were plenty of abandoned buildings, though. Worst came to worst, they could hide from the storm in one of those.

Most of the people they were passing on the street now were in a hurry, running by with faces covered, hoping to get to wherever they needed to go before the sirens blared out that the sandstorm was imminent. And there, right on cue, they went off.

Rita’s monologue cut off, and she looked around blinking, noticing the red dust blowing for the first time. “Mistah Steel?” she said, uncertain.

Shit. “Yeah,” he said. “Hang on.”

Juno jiggled the knob on the nearest door, and found it locked. Same with the next and the next. Who the hell locked the doors to a vacant building?

Finally, he came to a door that had an analogue lock instead of the standard electronic ones. Within thirty seconds, he had it picked, and was wrestling the rusty door open with Rita’s help.

By now, the streets were nearly empty. The only person left looked like they’d had the same idea as Juno, checking each door methodically in the hopes that one would be open.

“Hey,” Rita shouted, her voice pitched to carry over the howling wind. “Over here!” She waved her arms wildly.

“What are you doing?” Juno hissed. “We have no idea who that is. They could be an axe murderer for all we know.”

“But Mistah Steel,” she said. “If they don’t get out of that storm they could die.”

Juno let out a profound and heartfelt groan. He’d been close to too many deaths lately. Anthony DiMaggio, Croesus Kanagawa. Annie Wire. If another one happened now that he could have prevented, Juno wasn’t sure if he could ever bring himself to go back to his office. Might as well just let the storm take him instead.

The figure turned and came closer, and Juno was able to make out a bulky sweatshirt and cargo pants, and a face all dyed red with dust. They hesitated. “Come on,” Juno said.

They paused a moment longer, then hurried inside. Juno and Rita shoved the door shut behind them, and Juno took off his coat to block sand from coming in the gap by the floor. Next priority was finding a light switch - ah, there. Lights flickered on in sections, reluctant to come to life after months or years of disuse. Looked like they’d found an abandoned warehouse. Could be worse; there may not be anything to eat or drink (no, Rita’s snacks didn’t count as edible food) but at least there was plenty of space and breathable air.

The unexpected company certainly seemed to be taking advantage of that, having made their way halfway down the length of the building while Juno was taking care of the door. Juno shrugged and perched on an empty crate near the entrance. Not feeling very social, that was fine. Juno wasn’t either.

Rita, on the other hand, had barely stopped for breath once she’d coughed the dust out of her lungs. “If I’d known there was going to be a sandstorm I wouldn’t have worn my good blazer, now it’s going to be all ruined, but I guess I wouldn’t have gone outside in the first place, but I did and now we’re stuck here in this warehouse, it’s just like in _Mars by Midnight_, oh, oh! But your ex-lover isn’t outside in a helicopter desperately trying to land to tell you that he still loves you but he’s dying of plague and he wants to leave his fortune to you…”

“Shut up, Rita,” Juno growled, and she must have seen something in his face because, for once, she did.

“Sorry, boss,” she said quietly. “I forgot.”

“It’s fine,” Juno said. “I don’t want to talk about it.” He didn’t want to think about Nureyev either. Didn’t want to know what sort of trouble the man was getting himself into, or if he’d gotten caught, or if he’d found another PI on another planet and kissed him and told him his real name…

Juno turned to check on what their guest was doing. Looked like they hadn’t gone all the way to the other side of the building, but they were keeping a healthy distance from Juno and Rita, standing near a wall and apparently staring at nothing. Occasionally, they put a hand up to their head as if they were in pain. They hadn’t made any attempt to brush off their clothes or skin, even though all that dust must have been itchy.

Odd but not threatening, Juno decided. The only sign they had even noticed that Juno and Rita were still there was that their eyes had flickered over briefly when Rita mentioned that stream of hers.

Now Rita was peering over as well. “Hi,” she waved. “I’m Rita, and this is my boss, Mistah Steel. What’s your name?”

The person turned to face her, and she motioned them closer. They came, slowly. “Um. I’m Morgan Sawyer.” Their voice had a pleasantly neutral pitch, and they had no obvious tells, but Juno was one hundred percent sure that they were lying.

“Ooh!” Rita exclaimed. “Did you know that there’s a character on _Sanctuary Moon_ called Sawyer Morgan, and they’re a nurse at the colony’s main hospital?”

“I…did,” Sawyer admitted reluctantly.

“Does that mean you’ve seen the episode where the air filtration expert finally goes into labor but she knocks her head in the middle of the delivery and gets amnesia and by the time they clean the baby up and bring it back to her, she doesn’t remember that she was ever even pregnant?”

“Of course,” Sawyer said, and now they were looking almost excited, and Juno mentally resigned himself to listening to a discussion of this show for the foreseeable future.

Sure enough, an hour or two later, they were still going strong. Juno wasn’t even trying to follow the conversation; it seemed to require an encyclopedic knowledge of _Sanctuary Moon_, with a strong foundation in dozens of other streams as well. Instead, he tried to calculate the odds that he’d get trapped in a warehouse with the one person on Mars (with the possible exception of Frannie) who spent as much time watching streams as Rita. Juno wasn’t great at mental math, but he figured the number had to be pretty small.

Another thirty minutes, and Rita broke out the salmon snacks. She offered them to Sawyer and Juno, both of whom refused politely. Looked like Sawyer’s survival instinct was still intact, then.

“You may want to ration those,” Juno said when he was able to slip a word in edgewise. “We have no idea how long we’ll be stuck here.”

Sawyer looked at Juno sharply. “How long do sandstorms usually last?”

“Not from around here, are you?” Juno said. They shook their head. Juno wasn’t surprised; most natives wouldn’t have gotten themselves stuck so far from shelter. He wondered, briefly, what Sawyer had been doing around here before the storm hit.

“It varies. Generally, anywhere from about two hours up to three or four days. Longest recorded one was nearly a full week, I think. So, I hope you didn’t have anywhere you needed to be.”

Sawyer was looking more and more upset. “I’d been hoping to be off Mars by the end of today,” they said.

“Oh! Where were you going?” Rita asked.

“Visiting an old friend,” they said. “You’d like them, actually; they’re a fan of the entertainment feeds as well. They travel a lot, though, and it’s usually hard to match up our schedules. If I don’t leave today, I’m probably going to miss them.”

Juno frowned a little. This part of Hyperion City wasn’t anywhere near the spaceports.

“Aw, I’m sorry Mx. Sawyer,” Rita said. “Even if the storm clears up soon, there probably aren’t any more flights going out today. Leftover dust particles in the air, and all that.”

“Oh,” they said and winced a little, putting their hand to their head again.

“Are you okay?” Rita asked immediately. “Do you want some food? Water? I don’t have water. A massage?”

“No!” They jerked away from her hands before she could touch. “I’m fine. Just a headache.”

“Oh, Mistah Steel gets those all the time. Mostly because he’s drunk too much and hasn’t slept.”

“Hey!” Juno said, but she ignored him.

“So I always keep a bottle of ibuprofen in my purse,” she continued. “Want some?”

“Really, I’m fine,” Sawyer said. “But thank you.”

“Well, if you change your mind, all you have to do is ask. Oh! This reminds me of the _Nine Lives to Live_ episode where the one cat is trapped in the deuterium production facility - you remember? - and…”

And they were off again. This time, it was harder for Juno to lose himself in his own thoughts though; he was getting hungry, and the winds were only getting fiercer, and he caught himself eyeing Rita’s snacks before mentally smacking his own hand.

Sawyer didn’t seem as enthusiastic as before either. They were slower to respond, less inclined to jump in with their own opinions, and they cringed a little each time Rita forgot herself and shrieked with excitement.

After a few minutes of Rita monologuing without any contribution from Sawyer, Juno moved closer, concerned. “I think you should take Rita up on the ibuprofen,” he said. “You’re really not looking good.”

Sawyer turned to Juno, their face completely blank. “Please wait while I process your request,” they said.

“Um,” Juno said. “What?”

“Please continue to hold. I will be with you momentarily.”

“Okay…” Juno took a step back because, as Sawyer moved, Juno had gotten a glimpse of the port at the back of Sawyer’s neck that was mostly hidden by the hood of their sweatshirt, and _shit_, only augmented humans and SecUnits had ports like that. And augmented humans didn’t say things like “please continue to hold” -- not unless they were joking, and Sawyer definitely wasn’t.

Which meant that this was a SecUnit. A SecUnit with no humans nearby to give it orders, that had successfully fooled them into thinking it was human, neither of which should have been possible if its governor module was intact.

This was a rogue SecUnit. Very likely _the_ rogue SecUnit that Juno had been hired to assassinate. And he and Rita were trapped with it in a warehouse with a raging sandstorm outside.

“Rita,” Juno said, doing his best to keep the tension out of his voice, and almost certainly failing. “Could you come over here for a minute?”

She rushed over. “Do you know what’s wrong with them?” she asked.

“Kind of,” he said, taking a few more steps back and out of its direct line of sight. It didn’t move. “Just, I need you to stay behind me.”

“Why?” she demanded. “What are you gonna do?”

Juno had no idea. He had a blaster strapped to his waist, a knife in his boot, and a plasma cutter up his sleeve, but the SecUnit had heavy-duty guns built into its arms, and even incapacitated as it was, Juno was pretty sure its reflexes were fast enough that it could thoroughly murder him before he could draw his own.

This was all his fault. He should never have gone for a walk, should have known better than to allow a stranger in with them, and now Rita was in danger and there was nothing he could do to protect her.

The fingers of Juno’s right hand inched towards his blaster, while he reached out with his left to tug Rita behind him. The SecUnit still wasn’t moving.

Juno got a grip on his blaster and started easing it free. Slowly, ever so carefully. Until Rita realized what he was doing.

“How is a blaster going to help, boss?” she exclaimed, and Juno winced as the SecUnit finally started paying attention again. He could still salvage this somehow. His blaster was almost free; he was pretty sure he could get one shot in before he died, and he’d make it count. As long as Rita stayed behind him, she might have a chance to get out of here.

So, of course, she pulled out of his grip and spun around, putting herself directly in the line of fire. “Why are you trying to shoot Mx. Sawyer?”

The SecUnit had a blaster too, now, pulled out of nowhere at lightning speed. It still looked unsteady on its feet, but its arm was rock solid and aimed directly at them. Juno’s mouth went dry. He wanted to tell Rita he was sorry; to tell Sasha she was absolutely right when she said he’d die pointlessly (even if he wasn’t alone like she’d predicted); to kiss Nureyev again and find out if the man’s lips really were as soft as he remembered.

He wasn’t going to be able to do any of it. Juno took one last breath.

The SecUnit didn’t fire.

Juno took another breath, and then another. Why wasn’t the SecUnit shooting?

This was his chance. Rita was blocking the SecUnit’s line of vision; he could raise his own weapon just enough…

Rita turned around just as the SecUnit lowered its arm and bent over to place its gun on the ground and then kick it away. “Will someone please tell me what’s going on?” she said.

Juno had his blaster up in an instant. “It’s a rogue SecUnit,” he said. “Get out of the way.” Rita squeaked but didn’t move. The SecUnit just looked up at him, its face revealing every ounce of the weariness Juno usually saw on his own. It was amazing how expressive it was; Juno had always assumed that the faces beneath the helmets were every bit as blank as the helmets themselves.

“I’m not going to shoot you,” it said, its voice heavy with pain. “I’ve actually been trying to avoid the whole ‘murdering humans’ thing. Other than GrayCris, but they deserve it.”

“Why should I believe you?”

It shrugged and grimaced again, but kept its hands at its sides. “I don’t expect you to. It’s a lot harder to point to a line of people I haven’t killed than to a trail of bodies.”

That was not at all comforting. “And is there any reason for me not to shoot you right now, while I have the chance?”

“Mistah Steel!” Rita exclaimed. “I ain’t gonna let you kill them.”

“It’s dangerous,” Juno snapped. “It’s a weapon with no one to aim it, and nothing to stop it from going off.”

“Then why are they just standing there? Why didn’t they kill us earlier?”

“I don’t know. Does that matter?”

“We talked about _Sanctuary Moon_ for like three hours,” Rita argued. “Nobody who loves _Sanctuary Moon_ that much could be dangerous.”

Juno wasn’t sure about the logic of the second part of her argument, but he had to admit, the SecUnit’s behavior didn’t make sense. Why pretend to be human? Why indulge Rita? Why try to get off Mars without murdering anyone?

It could have killed them whenever it felt like. Which had to mean that it _didn’t_ feel like it. 

Still, Juno couldn’t risk his life (or, more importantly, Rita’s) on evidence this flimsy. “Why does GrayCris deserve it?” he asked.

Something dark flicked across the SecUnit’s face. Juno gripped his blaster more tightly.

“They tried to use me to kill my…my contract holders,” the SecUnit said. “They succeeded in wiping out the entirety of a different expedition. And then they covered both incidents up because it was drawing too much attention that they couldn’t afford; not with their illegal mining and salvaging operations.”

That fit with the information Rita had found. “So one of your owners pointed you at GrayCris and set you loose?”

“No,” it sounded faintly horrified. “They didn’t send me anywhere. They didn’t even expect me to leave.”

“Hold on a minute,” Rita said. “This is _that_ SecUnit? The one GrayCris hired you to take out?”

It looked shocked for a moment, and then its eyes narrowed. 

“Damnit, Rita!” Juno said. 

“You work for GrayCris?” it said, voice low and dangerous, like it regretted kicking away its gun, and was considering using the built-in ones. Every hair on Juno’s body stood on end. 

“Not exactly?” she said, perfectly unconcerned. “Just for this one job, I guess. Mistah Steel’s a private investigator, and I’m his secretary.” It glanced over at Rita, and now it had the nerve to look betrayed. “What?” she said. “It didn’t seem important before. And it’s not like he’s going to actually do it.”

“I think I’m the one that’s supposed to decide that,” Juno said. And he wanted to; a large part of his brain was still screaming that the SecUnit was a threat. But there was another part that was calmly pointing out the fact that even though it had nowhere to run and now knew it had been deceived, it wasn’t trying to attack. It was just standing there, waiting for Juno to decide its fate. 

His blaster was getting heavy, and his arms tired. One way or another, this had to end.

“If you’re going to shoot them, you’re going to have to shoot through me,” Rita said firmly. “And I know you won’t.”

He could knock her off balance, he thought. Push her down and shoot around her, but that would give the SecUnit time to shoot back. Would it fire this time, though? Juno wasn’t sure anymore. Nothing made sense; no SecUnit should be this _human_. 

“I can’t just let it go,” Juno said. “What if it decides killing people is a good idea after all?”

“They won’t. And if they do, it’s not your fault.”

“It is if I could have stopped it.” And that, there, was reason enough to take the shot. Juno could feel the crushing weight of everyone he had failed to protect, from Benzaiten Steel to Samantha Cartwright, smothering him. Add even one more name to that list, and he’d be ground to dust. 

But what if GrayCris hurt more people because Juno stopped the SecUnit from exposing their crimes? He couldn’t see the future, couldn’t figure out the right answer.

“It’s not.” Rita took a step closer to Juno. “It’s not, boss. None of the deaths that have happened lately are your fault. They’re the fault of whoever’s going around murdering people.”

Juno could feel his hands shaking, his breathing coming too fast. It wasn’t her place to forgive him. She had no power to absolve him of the suffering he’d caused, of the blood on his hands, and no right to assume that she knew what was going on in Juno’s head. Yet here she was, saying all the words he desperately needed to hear but couldn’t bear to make himself believe. “I should be able to figure it out,” he whispered. “I should have been able to save them.”

“Aw, Mistah Steel,” she said coming even closer, and now he was pointing his blaster point blank at her chest and he _couldn’t_, didn’t even want to look because he’d never be able to un-see that image of his hands and his gun and her teary smile. He let his arms fall to his sides, and had time for one deep breath and to holster his blaster before she barrelled into him for a hug. She squeezed tight, like she could could push out all the bad thoughts with the pressure of her arms, and he hugged her back just as tightly.

When they broke apart a few minutes later, the SecUnit hadn’t moved except to turn its head to give them some privacy, and massage its temples.

“Okay,” Juno said. “Okay. Not going to kill you.” He deliberately looked away from the relief and gratitude radiating from Rita, and the subtle shift in the SecUnit’s stance as it lost some of the tension it had been holding. “Going to deal with this mess somehow,” he continued. “First of all, do you know what’s causing the headaches?”

“It’s the storm, I think. It’s causing static interference on all the feeds, and normally I should be able to just shut them off but there’s static on my internal systems too.”

“Oh, yeah,” Rita said. “Sandstorms always fritz out the comms. I’ve got a workaround on mine, if you wanna see it?”

“I… would. Yes. Thank you.”

Juno instinctively tried to grab Rita as she pulled out her comms and bounced over to the SecUnit, but stopped and pulled his hand back before he made contact. He was going to trust it. For now anyway. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to keep a careful eye on it, and one hand near his blaster just in case. To its credit, it was very careful to do nothing threatening as she showed it the coding she’d added.

“Oh!” it said. “I see. That’s brilliant.”

Rita beamed. “Aw, thanks Mx. Sawyer. Wait, that’s not really your name, is it?”

“It’s not, but I don’t think your boss would appreciate what I normally call myself. Sawyer is fine.”

As it spoke, the lines of pain visibly eased from its face. 

“Good,” Juno said. “That’s one thing taken care of. So. Not killing you. Not going to turn you in. If I let you go, what will you do?”

“Leave Mars,” it said. “I wasn’t lying about the friend I was trying to meet. It can help me compile all the data I’ve got on GrayCris’ shady dealings. Maybe even come up with a way to take them down without putting the humans that I, um, worked with in danger.”

It was a good thought, but. “You won’t make it far,” Juno said. “Once GrayCris finds out that I failed, they’ll be after you again immediately, and you won’t have the cover of Mars’ radiation to hide you.”

“Actually, I have an idea about that,” Rita said. “Remember the _Sanctuary Moon_ episode where Sawyer Morgan finds out that the mob blames them for an IV mixup in the hospital that resulted in the bossman getting really sick, so they fake their own death and then start looking to find out who really did it?”

“You want to fake the SecUnit’s death,” Juno translated.

“I have thought about trying that before,” it said. “But there aren’t a lot of SecUnit bodies lying around to use as decoys, and GrayCris would figure out it wasn’t me as soon as they took it apart.”

“But what they really want from you is the data you have on them, right?” Juno said, realizing Rita’s plan.

“They want revenge too, I think. But retrieving the data is higher priority.”

“So what if we gave it to them?”

It jerked back a little. “I won’t let you…”

“No, no,” Juno interrupted. “Not the real data. Just a chip I could hand them and claim I didn’t feel like lugging the body all the way back to my office.”

“They’d figure out you lied pretty fast.”

“Not if I put a virus on the chip,” Rita said with a wicked smile. “I’m good at viruses. I can fry their systems for long enough for you to get half a dozen planets away.”

“They would still come after you,” it said.

Juno shrugged. “At last count, least forty percent of Hyperion City wants me dead. GrayCris can get in line behind the Kanagawas and my third grade pen pal.”

“I can’t pay you back.”

“You don’t need to. I’m getting paid by GrayCris anyway.” When it still looked upset, Juno added, “I don’t like them any more than you do. You’re giving me a chance to screw them over; we’ll call that your contribution.”

“Thank you,” it said, but Juno still detected a hint of doubt.

“Don’t thank us until we’ve actually gotten you off Mars,” he said. And hey, might as well go all-in. “I know a guy or two in the junkyards that still owes me a favor. Once this storm clears up, I’ll see what I can do about getting you on a flight off this rock.”

“I think it’s starting to die down a little,” Rita said. “The wind doesn’t sound so loud.”

She was right; another half an hour, and the storm had passed enough for Juno to be able to retrieve his coat and tug the door open, spilling a mountain of sand that had built up against it onto himself. As he hacked up a lung and tried to rub it out of his eyes, Rita sped past him, whooping. Sawyer retrieved its blaster and then followed more slowly.

“Thinking about running?” Juno said quietly as it passed him. The SecUnit tensed.

“There are very few humans that are willing to help others without a tangible reward for themselves,” it said. “All of them are idiots, and a lot of them are dead.”

“I think I’m insulted,” Juno said. “But I’m not dead yet, and I do want you out of my city. If you believe nothing else, believe that. So you can go, if you want; I won’t stop you. You might even make it offworld by yourself. But I give you my word that I can get you out of here without GrayCris on your tail.”

It thought for a moment. “My track record with trusting humans hasn’t been great,” it said. “I hacked my governor module for a reason. But I’ve met a few that I… didn’t hate. I haven’t decided yet whether or not you’re one of them, but I think Rita is. And she likes you. So yes, I’ll go with you.”

“Come on, then,” Juno said, and they set off down Hyperion City’s narrow twisting streets.

***

The next few weeks passed in a blur. The GrayCris rep was predictably sulky at the lack of a body, but accepted Rita’s doctored data chip readily enough (_it’ll overwrite all their files with episodes of_ Sanctuary Moon, she’d explained with a smirk). Juno never did hear back from the company after that, although he was pretty sure it was safe to assume he was high on their hit list now. Maybe even the entirety of their hit list, if Rita’s virus had deleted the rest of it.

There were other, more important things to think about, though. Like who was continuing to steal Martian artifacts, and where he might get more clues, and where Nureyev got his cologne from… no, not that last one.

Juno staggered up the stairs to the office, not bothering to fix his incorrectly-buttoned jacket or straighten his wild hair before entering.

“Afternoon, boss!” Rita sounded chipper as ever, no hint of a reprimand for the fact that Juno had been MIA for the entire morning in her tone. She’d probably just been watching streams the whole time anyway. “There was something in the mail for you!” Rita handed him a large brown envelope with no return address, and handwriting that he didn’t recognize. Something hard, bulky, and heavier than paper was inside.

“Thanks,” Juno said.

Once in his office, he set the envelope gingerly on his desk. It probably wasn’t a bomb — Rita didn’t handle the mail particularly gently — but that didn’t mean it wasn’t dangerous. He opened a window in case it was going to emit poisonous gas and he needed to toss it away, took out a knife, and sliced it open while holding it as far away from himself as possible.

When nothing tried to kill him, Juno slid it a little closer and peered inside. There was a data chip, a comm unit, and a piece of paper folded up.

Juno pulled the paper out and unfolded it. _The data chip is for Rita_, the note read. _It’s got deleted scenes from last year’s_ Mars by Midnight _holiday special that I found in a datalog. I’m sorry that I still have nothing of value to give you, Mr. Steel, but I owe you a favor. If you ever need me, use this comm. I can’t promise I’ll get to you quickly, but I do promise that I will come. -S_.

So the SecUnit hadn’t been caught yet, then. Good. Hopefully, it had found its friend and was working on taking GrayCris down once and for all.

Juno had to admit, he appreciated its promise. It was nice to know that there was someone somewhere out there in the universe that would come if Juno called, even if it wasn’t a certain thief. And hey, how many people could say that a SecUnit owed them a favor?

Juno tucked the comm away in a desk drawer, and went to give Rita her chip.

**Author's Note:**

> This entire fic was written due to Rita's and Murderbot's mutual love of soap operas. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


End file.
